WTF: Woman Makes Yogurt With Her Vagina And Eats It With Blueberries
After years of seeing store shelves stocked with probiotics made to keep vaginal bacteria healthy, Cecilia Westbrook thought it might be more practical to make her own.
Westbrook, an MD/PhD candidate with an appetite for science, wondered if she could cultivate bacteria from her own vagina and turn it into yogurt, directly ingesting an extra dose of the good stuff living in her reproductive system.
After using a wooden spoon to collect the "ingredient," Westbrook then added it to a batch of yogurt and waited overnight.
Then, as friend Janet Jay tastefully documents for Motherboard, she ate it topped with blueberries.
The taste was tangy and, reportedly, not at all that unpleasant.
The yogurt, which the FDA considers "adulterated," is dangerous for more reasons than just the immediate "ick" factor of digesting your own fluids, as it turns out.
Larry Forney, a University of Idaho microbiologist, told Vice that because of the vagina's constantly fluctuating bacterial state, there's no way you'd know whether the bacteria you swabbed was contaminated.
As such, your yogurt might be made from bacteria like the kind causing yeast infections, which is, of course, bad for your health.
But, that didn't stop Westbrook from trying out a second batch, stating it was more tart than the one before.
It's not the shock value of the yogurt bothering Westbrook, however. She told Jezebel the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the experiment indicates vaginas are still considered taboo.
Westbrook explained,
People just seem really grossed out by the fact that stuff lives in [the vagina]. But it's natural and part of your health. It seems weird to be grossed out about it. It's weird we don't know much more about vaginal flora than we do considering how important it is.
She won't be chowing down vaginal yogurt anytime soon, but that's not stopping her experiments.
Citations: Woman Made Possibly Delicious Yogurt From Her Vagina (The Cut)